Edgewood, WA Real Estate Blog

Recently I received a post card from the Washington Department of Highways. They wanted to let me and other Edgewood residents know they’re holding an open house. The topic is the expansion of Meridian (SR-161) from two to four lanes from 8^th St to 36^th Street.

I read the postcard. At first I thought it was a misprint; construction is going to occur in two phases – with final completion scheduled for sometime in 2023!

That’s 16 years to add two lanes for 24 blocks.

Naturally I got all fired up ready to charge into the open house and loudly express my outrage at the incompetence of the highway department – until my friend John gently explained it to me:

The self-defined purpose of government is to grow a bureaucracy.

Once the money is spent on a project, that money and that project are gone. There’s no longer justification for continuing to employ people to oversee it. But if the project is kept going and allowed to stretch out, a lot of people can be employed for a long time.

And if it takes more money to complete the project, the bureaucrats can always go back to the taxpayers and say, “if we don’t complete the project, we’ll have wasted all that money we’ve already spent.”

Maybe it’s cynical, but it pretty much explains to me why we have so many ongoing projects, and so relatively few ever seem to be completed.

Now, tell me again when the SR-167 extension going to be completed?